Terra Mystica: Women

Mary with Child Christ (Wikimedia Commons)

The woman represents the self-love of the man. She is also his inspiration and his goddess. A man can learn an infinite amount about spiritual life from the behavior of women, especially his own wife, if he has one. At some point he realizes that he is dependent on the woman, but she is not dependent on him, and that the woman can become dangerous to him and destroy him. When a man falls for his wife, his righteous self-love becomes harmful selfishness, inspiration becomes madness and the goddess becomes a demon to the man. Therefore, it is important for the man not to tie himself to a woman's apron strings.

A married person blessed with spiritual insight sees his wife as a spiritual master, because the way a woman behaves towards a man is the way the soul behaves towards the spirit of God, which is the heart of the soul. Even a bad woman can be the best teacher by showing how the soul resists the spirit of God, from which one can learn as much as from a good woman.

Basically, every soul behaves to the Lord like a woman behaves to the man. So we can say that we are all female beings in the spiritual sense.

Women are something like the secret focus of the New Revelation of Jakob Lorber. With some spiritual progress you will find that you begin to meditate on women almost like a materialist. Of course not about those shameful things that belong to the carnal lust, nor about what is called "romantic love". Such things even become disgusting in spiritual life at some point, because you see through the illusions and recognize the wretched truth about them, and also because they make you unhappy as they pull you away from the Lord. With the meditation of a spiritual person on women in comparison to that of a still only natural person, it is like the two ends of a staff: They may look the same, but they are the most distant from each other.

About staying unmarried

There is a deep reason why Jesus remained single which was very unusual for His time. He was (and is) the greatest mystic. A bond with the world, even in love, means for such persons to become unfaithful to God, and they realize that true peace and full safety cannot be found in the transient world. For such a person earthly and heavenly love must conflict in every relationship of heart, and so the struggle ends with the renunciation of happiness on earth, if one does not want to deny the divine voice in the heart. And there is another reason. Jesus said: "I have come to destroy the works of woman." When asked what He meant, He replied: "The woman's works are the sensual desires. And everything that they produce, their effects: birth and death - I will one day abolish." (Himmelsgaben, 2.461216.15) Marriage is a compromise and serves to procreate children. Of course one cannot enter into such a thing if one wants to end birth and death or suffering in general.

Jakob Lorber also remained unmarried and found himself confronted with existential needs. But it's not just men, it's the same with women. Female mystics who are in love with the Lord often remain unmarried. And it was made even harder for them than for the men. In the past, unmarried women were practically not tolerated outside the walls of monasteries, and in backward societies this is still the case today.

Remaining unmarried is a kind of vocation or providence. Obviously the Lord wants certain persons to remain unmarried so that He can take the place of the marital companion. Or, however, He has mercy on those unfortunate lonely ones who have been rejected and destroyed by the evil world. Since man need company to survive, the Lord becomes friend and companion to the lonely ones, whom are now lucky ones.These two reasons are probably inseparable.

The battle of love

There's a song by Barbra Streisand that says it beautifully:

I am a woman in love

And I do anything

To get you into my world

And hold you within

It's a right I defend

Over and over again

What do I do?

A woman often knows a man better than he knows himself, even if the man is wise and understanding. In the New Revelation we find Miss Jarah. Her wisdom surpassed that of archangel Raphael. That alone is quite remarkable. From the tales of Jarah it is clear that her very nature fascinated even the Lord.

Just as the soul becomes strong and powerful when she awakens and nurtures the divine spirit in her, so it is with loving women. Just guessing the power that the soul attains when she unites with her spirit from God takes your breath away. It sounds like heresy: As wonderful and fascinating and unsurpassable as the Lord is, next to a woman who loves Him above everything, He fades away, she surpasses Him, and one begins to ask oneself, who is really God or the highest? God or those who love Him above all things? I have still not found a really satisfactory answer to this question. Maybe it comes to a draw and a penalty shoot-out?

Satana

The goddess is omnipresent in Far Eastern religions. And yes - she has a cat. (Bhagvati, Wikimedia Commons)

Ultimately, everything revolves around a woman and her name is: Satana.

"All the stars, suns and worlds are showing what I already have done for her sake, to bring her on the right path; but so far nothing bore fruit with her, - she remains the old, fury filled, implacable enemy of My Love!" (Household of God, 3.18.13)

"No spirit can grasp the patience Godhead has always shown you (Satana) and the paths taken to purify you." (Robert Blum, 2.194.1)

God has put into Satana, so to speak, a perfect second self. She is, to a certain extent, created in a contemporary manner, but is nevertheless equally powerful in all dimensions of infinity confronted with the Deity.

By conquering the souls of men, the Lord also gradually conquers the soul of Satana, for the souls of men were set free from that of Satana. In the end, Satana or her love life becomes that being (or is, because God is not subject to time) that literally stands next to God as Goddess. A being that is the inspiration of God. A being one with God and at the same time beyond God. A being that we are ourselves, or somewhat less "heretical", whose servants we are in the service of the Lord. I don't think this being will keep the name Satana. What's her name?

New prophets and their announcements

Emanuel Swedenborg

The believer of the New Revelation received via Jakob Lorber usually also accept other teachings or announcements, which sometimes led to fierce controversy. Gottfried Mayerhofer, Emanuel Swedenborg, Sadhu Sundar Singh, Anna Katharina Emmerich, Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme are relatively undisputed. Other Christian and non-Christian teachers and saints also find a friendly welcome, whereby the non-Christian ones tend to rank among the more distant ones. Since new prophets are currently hardly dependent on publishers any more, because they can publish their announcements themselves via the Internet or by self-publishing, the discussions have been reduced. 

The quality of the visionaries, prophets or mediums is very different. There are dubious, psychotic, power-hungry and manipulative persons, but also quite unsuspicious, trustworthy mediators, angels on earth as it were. For those mediums that convey the word of the Lord, the believer of the New Revelation introduced the term "Vatermedium" (father medium). It also serves to distinguish from spiritistical mediums. Father mediums usually retain in a state of inspiration their free will and their natural physical and spiritual state, just as the biblical prophets once did. They are not in a trance and are not helplessly at the mercy of the spirits.

As for the many word recipients after Jakob Lorber, many are simply free riders. Catholics know the phenomenon: when Bernadette had Marian apparitions in Lourdes, the Bishop of Tarbes received dozens of reports from other supposed visionaries. But only Bernadette passed the church tests. The visionaries of Fatima were also imitated. It is said, therefore, that a hundred false prophets are for one true prophet. These "false" prophets are not necessarily bad people. Mostly they are just religious enthusiasts who long to receive messages or visions from heaven. They are very pious and want to save the world. Besides, they're not the brightest in the country. If they knew what prophets had to go through, they would not wish such a vocation. They're like fans of stars imitating their heroes. Sometimes they find themselves in an environment that literally pushes them to become a medium - like in a thunderstorm that eventually produces lightning and thunder. At some point they receive the much longed-for divine words. However, it is doubtful whether these announcements and dreams are really from God. The biblical prophets did not long to be prophets, but were called unexpectedly, sometimes even against their will. Jakob Lorber did not long for any divine vocation either. His passion was music and his vocation really got in the way.

Childrens of Fatima

Already the Bible reports in the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament about real and false prophets. In the case of Micah, a true prophet faced four hundred false prophets. In the 16th century, the mystic John of the Cross reported on the formation of false words. He wrote that the beginners in meditation easily imagine to be addressed by God, although this is not the case. In addition, there is the desire and the love for such things, which burn in them, that they give themselves answers and think these are answers of God. Such people would then fall into great foolishness and gibberish. Similarly Emanuel Swedenborg: "Whoever thinks a lot about religious things and absorbs himself into them in such a way that he sees them inside, will finally also hear spirits speak to him." Such people then become visionary enthusiasts who believe to recognize the Holy Spirit in every spirit they hear, when in reality they are only enthusiastic or fanatical spirits.

Finally, there is the mystification, the conscious deception of people through speculation on their metaphysical needs. The gullibility of seekers is used to make them believe the most ridiculous things - messages from UFO commanders and confused teachings about pyramids fall into this realm.

A medium deceived by enthusiastic or fanatical spirits can do a lot of harm. Often there are false messages, such as the end of the world is imminent and one has to retreat to a refuge. Sometimes the serious prophets and their announcements and even Jesus Christ and God are attacked and undermined. Many people have lost their faith and their fortune as a result of such machinations. Even for the medium that does not enjoy the special protection under which prophets truly called by God stand, the matter can end badly. Formerly good people have changed a lot to the negative after they became a father medium. Nevertheless, it is more important, especially for Christian people, to beware of thinking that a real prophet is a false prophet than to fall for an enthusiast. Those who, after conscientious examination, believe that they are actually dealing with a false prophet, may exhort him and his followers. But if they do not want to hear, which is very likely, then they should simply be avoided. This is the instruction of the New Testament. The "gift" is not accepted. If you are cursed for this, then this is only a sure proof that you are really dealing with a false prophet. "Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag ich dir den Schädel ein!" (And if you refuse to be my brother, I will knock your block off!) Fanaticism is one of the clearest signs of the activities of false prophets, false teachers and evil leaders.

Some words about Krishna

This entry is the continuation and completion of Some words about Hinduism und Vaishnavism and Some words about Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Krishna lifting Govardhana mountain

In Hinduism, Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, the aspect of preservation in the Hindu trinity of creation (Brahma), preservation (Vishnu) and destruction (Shiva). Depending on orientation or sect, either Brahma or Vishnu or Shiva is regarded as the only one God, the other two as demigods. There is not much of a Brahmaism, but Vishnuism (also Vaishnavism) and Shivaism are widespread. Vishnuism, the area of Hinduism that sees Vishnu as the one true God, worships Vishnu especially in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna. The theological and philosophical concept of God of Hinduism is as contradictory and absurd, albeit in a different way, as the God of the great Christian sects, divided into three persons.

What or whom one recognizes as God or the Supreme is of fundamental importance, for all life, on this side as well as on the other, depends on it. Fortunately, most people feel the truth about God much better in their hearts than the creators of religious and church teachings in their minds. You don't have to understand the sun to be enlivened by its light. The God-sun sheds the same light on all men, which is why there is virtue and the demand for a virtuous life in every religion, provided that it possesses a higher morality. That is why they know love, hope, faith, humility, justice, etc. Although these virtues will not be perfect if they are clouded by an imperfect knowledge of God, they will always produce the same moral effects of upliftment, ecstasy, mercy, modesty, restraint with the desire and hope to come into the possession of God. Therefore, even in imperfect religions one finds people who achieve an impressive perfection. But of course it is not wrong to know that the sun is the only one gigantic star of our solar system, and not three, which are somehow only one. As long as there is a ghost of three gods ghosting through religion, it is paganism - even if it may be called Christianity.

Krishna has emancipated himself quite far from Vishnu and has become something like the god of love. His plays describe the love between God and His devotees in all kinds of relationships. Parts of it can even illuminate mystical Christianity, but caution is advised. Krishna is also the proclaimer of the Bhagavad-gita, the book that can be described as the Bible of the Hindus. It is about the relationship between him and Arjuna, his friend and devotee. But the actual topic is the God-willed fight. Krishna encourages the reluctant Arjuna to fight and kill his own relatives. Basically, Krishna preaches a warrior ethos. But since many other things are also discussed, each Hindu sect focuses on what is most agreeable to it and declares this to be the true message of the Bhagavad-gita.

 

The Origin of Krishna - Ancient Greece

Anyone who compares the stories of Heracles and Pan with those of Krishna must be blind if he does not notice the many similarities. Alexander the Great came to the Ganges during his conquests and this is where Krishna began. The people of the Ancient World were quite pragmatic when it came to gods: if you were defeated, then the gods of the victors were taken over, since they were quite obviously more powerful than your own gods. The ancient Israelites were probably the only exception: When their land was conquered by the Persians, the temple of Jehovah destroyed, and the elite was kidnapped and brought to Babylon, they remained faithful to Jehovah. The reason for this was because Jehovah was really God and not just a myth, like the other gods of the ancients. Once you know the true one God, you no longer associate yourself with many "gods".

When Alexander the Great came to what is now India, Indra was the ruling god of the ancient Indians. The powerful general from ancient Greece defeated and subdued the local kingdoms, what meant that "Heracles/Pan" was stronger than Indra. So Heracles/Pan took the place of Indra under the name Krishna. "Krishna" means "black" in Sanskrit and Pan is black. Therefore Indra was degraded to a demigod, who is defeated and reprimanded by Krishna. 

Hinduism is like an octopus collecting things from everywhere and often creating fascinating new things from it. Krishna is the Indian version of Heracles, to which a good portion of Pan has been added. Heracles stands for "Herculean" power and heroic deeds, and this is exactly what Krishna does all the time, even as a baby and toddler. He fights monsters and demons and gods and proves his strength by holding a mountain above him and the inhabitants of Vrindavan with only one finger. Among the demons we find a demonic snake (the hydra), a demonic donkey and a demonic horse (Mares of Diomedes) as parallels to the Hercules saga.

Krishna fighting Kaliya, Wikimedia Commons, Nizil Shah

Heracles fights with a legendary bow and club and is a feared warrior. Heracles uses a bow to marry Iole. Krishna is also described as a great bowfighter, killing countless enemies (and others). His bow is more like a weapon of mass destruction. He uses his bow to obtain Rukmini. He also fights with the club. Attributes of both Heracles and Krishna include the club, bow and quiver.

Heracles and Krishna both grow up among cowherds. Both have many wives and a lot of children. Even with the children there are similarities: Heracles kills some children in madness, Krishna's descendants kill each other in intoxication. Heracles and Krishna both die of an arrow, albeit under different circumstances.

The Herculean side of Krishna is less emphasized in Hinduism today. Since the last centuries, the characteristics adopted from Pan have been more emphasized. Pan is the god of the forest and nature, a shepherd god. He plays the flute and chases the nymphs. Fertility and all that. His special love is for the moon goddess Selene. The parallels to Krishna in Vrindavan with the cowherd girls are striking. Krishna's favorite is Radha, the goddess of luck.

Yet Krishna has two faces. If you experience the tragedies of life, you don't want a god that has nothing to do but enjoy. You don't expect help from a bluish cowboy always sporting around with cowgirls. Then the Herculean side of Krishna comes into play. So he is a hero, the protector, the fighter against evil. The female and maternal side are represented by Radha and Yasoda. Radha is actually the one who enjoys the sympathy, because she suffers so much from her love for Krishna (who can't marry her, because otherwise the story wouldn't be so dramatic) that she goes insane and finally even commits suicide. The Greek goddesses didn't have it easy either. Who dares to love the Greek gods has to expect a terrible fate like that of Europe, Dido, Daphne, Eurydice and Proserpina.

Is Krishna Satan?

Rasa-dance, the dance of delight

Is Herakles Satan? Or Pan? Not in the ordinary or propagandistic sense. Nor Krishna. So-called gods and heroes who did not live in reality sprang from human imagination. Like Santa Claus and Superman, they have some qualities of the one and only true God, but otherwise they are nothing but empty names and products made of matter by human hands. As a natural person, Krishna lived as little as the ancient Greek gods. 

In Christian iconography, Pan became the inspiration for the devil, which spreads to Krishna. Where the black devil dances with the witches on Walpurgis Night and unites with them, pitch-black Krishna (he's not really smurf blue, that's some artistic idea) performs the Rasa dance with his mistresses and then meets them for some research in the bushes. That these are only mythological stories can be confirmed by anyone who has ever tried to dance naked through the forest at night and to keep his amorous feelings facing the kindness of nature - as there are hedgehogs, thorns, pointed stones and all kinds of abysses that cannot be seen in the darkness.

As far as Krishna is worshipped as God, he is an idol. Everyone and everything but God can be made an idol. Even Jesus, who is indeed God as man, worshipping Him as God without understanding His divinity. An idol is something or someone to whom divine worship is shown, although it or he or she is not God. In this sense, one could say that Krishna is Satan because Satan wants to be God instead of God.

"Krishna" is the name the Vaishnavas use for the one and only supreme Personality of Godhead, for God. As I wrote at the beginning, it does not matter so much whether the perception or understanding of God is completely correct. It's the better feeling people have for God that is fundamentally important, since it is ultimately the basis for the nature and coexistence of an entire people. And this feeling is well developed in the Vaishnavas, although cloudy. The problem of the Vaishnava and Hindus is that they do not know Jesus Christ in truth. And that is where the wrath of God comes into play.

The wrath of God

Also very blue: Superman

As long as and as far as religion is still the religion of law, it is subject to the wrath of God, God remains a judge, a figure of fear, and does not become man's loving father. As long as God's wrath has not been overcome by God's love, Jesus Christ, people are subject to the wrath of God. The wrath of God is not something real in the sense of an angry person who devils around like an unreasonable person. Since God is pure love, His wrath is more like theatrical thunder, but still to be feared. The wrath of God is better called God's zeal.

While the love of God converts evil people and brings them into a new good life, which is eternal, thus saving them, the wrath of God aims to destroy them. God's wrath is the hero who takes out the bad guy. God's love wins him over and is the true hero. In both cases, the fight essentially takes place on the spiritual level. Both have their justification. Because most of us are more or less evil, we think God's wrath is cool. Until he sabers off something you'd like to keep for reasons of survival. At the latest then you understand: Really cool is the love of God.

Krishna is a personification of God's wrath. He appears to destroy the evil people, when there are too many of them on earth, as he himself says in the Bhagavad-gita. With Krishna, heads and limbs fly around - yet the violence is only illustrative, like in a computer game or film. Evil is fought and eradicated, not so much the wicked.

About Bhagavad-gita

The Bhagavad-gita and other wisdom teachings are the teachings of the ancient Indian wise men who put them into the mouths of mythological gods and heroes to give them weight and bring them to the people. This fact becomes very obvious when one considers that the lives of these gods and heroes largely do not correspond to those good teachings. And where the teachings correspond to their lives, there it is material for those people who cause slaughter in the name of religion and whatever. Therefore the Bhagavad-gita was also the favourite book of Heinrich Himmler, who used it (and other Far Eastern warrior teachings) to brew the philosophical foundations for the SS. The most popular excuse of the Nazis before the Nuremberg Court was: "We have only done our duty (dharma)!" This comes essentially from the Bhagavad-gita. Surrender to me, just do your duty as a warrior, and kill them all, is Krishna's teaching to Arjuna. But Himmler took only what was suitable for him out of the Bhagavad-gita. The Bhagavad-gita is in itself a good book and divine influence definitely present. It is like the sun, which also gives light and warmth to evil people. The Bhagavad-gita is not compromised because it was placed in Krishna's mouth. Neither Gandhi, nor the Vaishnavas, nor the Hindus would have accept this book if it were actually something bad.

Flaws and contradictions in the New Revelation

The Childhood of Jesus, Chapter 10

In view of certain shortcomings and contradictions, there is the view that the New Revelation consists partly of the error-free Word of God and partly of the writer's own. This view is strongly contradicted by the New Revelation. Jakob Lorber, it is said, had always had to behave and write as the Lord commanded him. He did this not out of compulsion, but out of pure devotion, because he himself wanted it that way. One should not think him such an evil sinner, who allows himself arbitrary acts in the name of the Lord. The New Revelation is completely pure. God would not speak to prophets who allow themselves to be arbitrary. Jakob Lorber did not need to be critical of the announcements because he knew better than anyone where they came from. The idea of semi-silk revelations comes from spiritism and has unfortunately also been accepted by leading friends of the New Revelation mediated by Jakob Lorber. "Revelations" that are not really given by God, but by a spirit who poses as a higher being to give weight to his words, consist of partly true and false statements.

Then there is the exposing idea that Satan would whisper wrong things to a prophet of God, which would have happened to Jakob Lorber as well. This questionable idea may have essentially originated in Islam. Muhammad explained that those announcements made to him that proved to be false or impractical had been whispered to him by Satan. As far as contradictions are concerned, the last thing said in the Koran would always apply. Such statements, which are characteristic of false prophets, are not found in the New Revelation. There it is expressly said that God has never worked with Satan, He would not share a prophet with the devil. A prophet says "God says" and not "God says or does not". He takes responsibility for communicating the Word of God given to him. God speaks to prophets in a way that is beyond all doubt.

God and His prophet form a unity. How absurd is the question, or rather the doubt, if not the petty accusation that Jakob Lorber may have interwoven something of himself into the New Revelation. One would like to answer: Let him! As long as he was called by God to this ministry, God surely directed everything according to His will. It's a lot like how it is with a government official: Of course, the personal nature of a government official is also taken into account in an official letter. As long as the government official adheres to what was prescribed by the state, there is nothing wrong with that, even if the government official is at war with spelling. Therefore, the revelation generally explains obvious shortcomings and contradictions as the Lord's approval, as a remedy for those who read the work according to the mind, instead of taking it alive from the heart into the spirit. The readers are thus encouraged to search more eagerly and vividly in the given.

Moreover, spiritual works use parables and correspondences that do not have to apply in the literal sense. When Jesus proclaims to eat His flesh and drink His blood, He is not propagating cannibalism. God's influence in the Word of God always extends from the heavenly sense of the Word to the literal sense - even if the latter seems completely absurd. Think of the prophets of the Bible. For example, what strange things John writes in his Revelation! How odd must one be to ask whether John might have woven something of his own into his writings! Moreover, a work of revelation also consists of things that can only be understood later.

Alone in the unspoilt wilderness (Ciucaș Peak, Romania)

The systematics of the New Revelation is also criticized. It's a mess, they say. To this the New Revelation responds that it follows the order of God, which is completely different from the order of men. In the great outdoors, God makes everything seem to grow wildly disordered, while man creates orderly fields. And so it is with the New Revelation. It's also about inspiration. Who is inspired by a field, except perhaps the farmer who hopes for a good yield? How boring and dull are the ordered rows of a field against the wild beauty of untouched nature! The New Revelation is a work of art, not an accounting journal. It contains a spiritual dimension that is not so easy to grasp, but more important than anything else, a call of God that holds spiritual life. The Lord does not march in an uniform step with His own, no, He dances with them. Although, on the surface, the New Revelation is relatively understandable, it takes a very differentiated approach, looking at many things from different points of view. This only becomes apparent after extensive reading, when the reader compares and weighs up the statements. Black and white thinking doesn't get you very far with the New Revelation. If you want to find something, you first have to make an effort, search and order and above all think about it yourself - and that brings you to spiritual life. The goal of revelation is primarily transformation, the spiritualization of man, and only secondary information, mere knowledge transfer. It's about bringing the spirit to life. This is achieved by activity, not by serving everything on a silver platter. A runner becomes successful by running, and not by driving him to the finish-line.

Thank you for reading.

Some words about Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Before you can see the light, you have to deal with the darkness. When I walked through the night, because the Christ sun had not yet risen for me, I had no choice but to orientate myself in the light of moon and stars. The moon, that was Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada for me, and I was (and am) very thankful that such a beautiful full moon had come up for me at that time. Prabhupada was an Indian beggar monk (sannyasi) who came to the West to spread Krishna-consciousness or the faith of the Bengali Vaishnavas. He was the founder of the "International Society for Krishna-consciousness" (ISKCON). By "Krishna" he meant the one true God and not one of the many "gods" of Hinduism. So you can say that he was an Eastern missionary who came to the West after the Western missionaries came to the East. There is a lot to say about this Krishna - but in another entry. BTW this entry is a continuation of "Some Words about Hinduism and Vaishnavism".

Although the moon reflects the sunlight and throws it onto the earth as moonlight, it is a cold and dark body. In addition, the moon always turns only one side towards the earth and hides what is on his back. Since there are more than enough beautiful stories about Prabhupada, as he already spread them among his disciples, I would like to dedicate myself here to his dark side.

Prabhupada forbade to regard the spiritual master as a normal person. This is not wrong when the spiritual master is Jesus Christ. The mistake is to consider someone as Jesus Christ or "like Jesus" who is not. To be like Jesus - to awaken the dead, to command the elements, to rise from death, etc.  is not a cheap thing. Prabhupada has done some extraordinary deeds, but none of them can compete with those of Jesus Christ. He didn't equal Jesus. However, since he defined this as a condition for a true spiritual master, which, as already mentioned, is completely correct, he disassembles himself as soon as someone realizes that he is not like the sun, but only like the moon. I don't know if that was clear to him, I doubt it, yet this institution is divinely brilliant. So it can be said that Prabhupada was guided by God, probably in a different way than he himself was aware of. He paves the way for the true spiritual master and disappears as soon as he appears. With this he resembles John the Baptist. Remarkably, Prabhupada himself compared the movement for Krishna consciousness to the moon, and his disciples should also be like the moon.

And it was more than just a coincidence that Prahupada was present in New York and San Francisco, right in that short time when the American youth was interested in a new consciousness. Because the hippie movement went down the drain very quickly, after barely a year there was only sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Prabhupada wasn't just a lucky guy. There was a higher power.

 

Special dreams

Dreams should not be underestimated. Although they are usually just imaginations, there are also special dreams that may be better called visions.Visions are not the confused mish-mash known from ordinary dreams, but are remembered as real occurrences. They also remain in your memory, and do not disappear. If you ever had such a vision, you know that it wasn't just an ordinary dream. Visions can change the whole world - just think of Saul's vision on his way to Damascus when he became Paul. Prabhupada came to the West after his spiritual master Bhaktisiddhanta repeatedly called upon him in dreams to do so.

I, too, had a special dream just before I learned what unpleasant things had happened after Prabhupada's departure. This was at the end of 1995: I saw Prabhupada sitting behind a harmonium, singing and chanting very concentrated, obviously not perceiving his surroundings. Around him stood many of his disciples. But they were not friendly to him, on the contrary: they were very angry with him and I couldn't even recognize their faces because they had demon faces. One, the most dangerous and probably the leader, had a knife that he used to threaten Prabhupada. One or two had guns, but this guns were hidden. They couldn't do anything to Prabhupada as long as he was chanting. And so he kept chanting.

Why was Prabhupada in such a precarious situation? What made these disciples so angry? I can answer that, but first I have to talk about the dark side of the moon.

 

Move fast and break things

In the first years, in the 1960s, when Prabhupada travelled from India to the USA and then lived penniless in New York, he was only "Swamiji". A kind alien who somehow fitted all the hippies and lunatics despite his advanced age. When he had accepted some disciples, he became very ill and went back to India to die there, which in some ways happened, because he did not return to America as the needy old man, but as a great leader, a superhuman, a spiritual mission vehicle. From then on he was called Prabhupada, which means "One who is always found at Krishna's lotus feet." It's a name for a guru. Something had happened in India. They say he was seen there as an incarnation of God. His disciples believed that Krishna personally authorized him to continue his mission in the West. Maybe Prabhupada just realized that his time was limited. So he gave full throttle. He began to become an idol. He formed around himself a cult of personality, as one finds it in dictatorships.

The power of submission is based on the reception of subjects into the imaginary body of the despot and these subjects contribute to the maintenance of power through the projection of this body onto their own body. It's basically a self-sacrifice. As soon as the despot is no longer there, the cruel love of the fatherly despot to his children cedes its place to fraternal cruelty. The utopia of one eye is replaced by the heterotopia of the gazes. Everything that had been suppressed for years breaks out. The assimilated subjects, now suddenly disconnected, try to enthrone themselves in a multiplied narcissus, each of whom fights for his piece of the cake of power in the name of small differences. The form of government of the monarchy is followed by a disorderly change to polyarchy. But these rulers soon lose their aura, for the masks fall. And of course there is the call "Give us back our former system!" - So this is about dictatorship. Isn't it also the history of ISKCON?

ISKCON headquarters, Mayapur, India, 2006

Trouble in Hippie Dreamland

 

Several disciples left Prabhupada when they noticed that essential things were wrong. This was hardly noticeable during his lifetime simply because Prabhupada initiated many new disciples, mostly not personally, but with the help of deputies. Critical and better educated disciples could hardly stand it for long, since Prabhupada regarded them as competitors. His teaching was: Questioning guru means killing guru. Those few disciples who mastered Sanskrit noticed the not particularly developed Sanskrit knowledge of their master, and that he presented Vaishnavism in a sectarian way, with himself in the center. In order to conceal these things, Praphupada suppressed the study of Sanskrit with his disciples and even forbade them to deal with Indian Vaishnavas, whereby he went as far as to forbid even the books of his own spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhanta. One should not jump over an acarya (spiritual teacher). No wonder, then, that his few learned students left him.

The other disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta, senior Indian Vaishnavas, were suspicious of Prabhupada: They could see that ISKCON was heading for an abyss, that Prabhupada took out a loan that not he, but others and his disciples would have to repay. After me the deluge. Prabhupada had hardly had any contact with Bhaktisiddhanta and had never been particularly noticed. According to Prabhupada the other disciples of his guru were jealous: where the more learned and wiser had failed, he, the common disciple, was successful. Prahupada considered the very thought that one of  the other disciples of his guru could replace him if he died or became too ill to lead his movement as insulting. When Indian Vaishnavas dared to initiate Prabhupada's disciples again, because they considered the initiations of Prahhupada (through temple presidents or deputies) as not authentic, Prabhupada felt severely offended. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between: Prabhupada rushed forward and broke things that might have been better left whole, and some other disciples of Bhaktisiddhanta were at least conceited.

Let us now look at the two most famous slogans of ISKCON:

"He built a house in which the whole world can live":  If this house is to be ISKCON, not even his disciples could live in it. Hardly one of them was over 30 and getting old and ill was simply not intended. Those who were unsuitable for preaching and distributing books were, if they were lucky, thrown out of the temple, otherwise deported to raise money as "householders" in farm communities that were to be run according to the utopian ideas of Prabhupada: A grotesqe mixture of "Little House on the Prairie" (Gandhi-style) and caste system. In addition, they had to donate half of the income to ISKCON. His disciples' children were the worst affected. So that their parents could devote all their energy to serve Krishna (or rather Prabhupada) and so that they received a spiritual education, they were separated from their parents far too early and put into gurukulas (boarding schools). Especially those in India turned out to be hellholes of abuse.

"Chant and be happy!" The falsity of this ISKCON slogan is evident in the mere fact that the Vaishnavas have defined ten nama-aparadhas (offences against the holy name) which are virtually impossible to comply with. They are attempts to explain why just chanting does not work as intended. Singing and chanting together is fun for some time, but it is not the solution to all problems, what this slogan should say. Heaven is reached through love of God and love of neighbor, not by chanting on cloud nine. When Prabhupada was dying, there was chanting for his recovery all over the world, because he really believed this would help him. He died anyway. If he'd gone to the doctors, they could have bought him a few more years. What the official Prabhupada biography conceals: Already when he returned to India terminally ill for the first time, he became healthy because his disciple Kirtanananda succeeded in finding a Sikh doctor who gave him antibiotics and not because of the chanting of his disciples. Praphupada otherwise only wanted to be treated by Ayurvedic doctors, but most of them are nothing but quack doctors. When he was no longer only "Swamiji" but "Prabhupada", he did not let himself be told anything and so he died without being able to finish his Srimad Bhagavatam, which he had so much wished for. If you just chant instead of doing necessary things, you might even die.

Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread

There is probably no proverb which Prabhupada would describe better. The other disciples of his spiritual master were criticizing him this way, but he thought, "Fool? Yeah, it's possible. But that's the way I am. My guru was always very affectionate to me." Courage or a lack of imagination? Prahupada, however, was by no means malicious; rather, he resembled a child reaching for the moon. Children's dreams need megalomania - until, at some point, reality lifts the finger. Hence statements like this: "My books will be for the next 10,000 years the law books of human society." San Francisco was to become New Jagannath Puri. Mayapur in India should become an ideal city, divided into districts with brahmanas (priests), kshatriyas (warriors), vaishyas (farmers, merchants) and sudras (workers). As far as I know, a revival of the caste system is fortunately banned by the Indian state. But in New Vrindavan in the USA, experiments were carried out with the caste system (Prabhupada-style) and it ended in madness and murder. There's a book about it: "Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hare Krishnas"

Prabhupada had never come out of India before his trip to New York. He did not understand the "rest of the world". On the one hand, he was arch-conservative, but on the other hand, he was also adaptable and willing to reform. For example, Prabhupadas role model of women was that of the conservative Indian and can drive every feminist to run amok. But he was also the first guru to initiate women, an outrage among the Vaishnavas. Women and men live together in a temple! Women as preachers and founders of temples! Shocking! He adapted much to the circumstances, yet Prabhupada's disciples resembled African crocodiles who had been abandoned in the North Sea. Since his disciples had neither health insurance nor pension insurance, many of them ran into great difficulties. But Prabhupada was not cruel - he just didn't know how things were going outside of India and he really believed Krishna would fix everything.

Prabhupada and his disciples with Karlfried Dürckheim in Germany (Wikimedia Commons, Christian Jansen)

NOT infallible, NOT all-knowing, NOT like Jesus

That Prabhupada imitated Jesus can be seen, for example, in the appointment of the GBC (the governing body of ISKCON). Twelve of his disciples were appointed as his representatives. When he passes away, they should be his assignees. Apostles Prabhupada-style. Whom by the way have failed grandiosely.

Prabhupada's understanding of Jesus clearly shows that he did not know much about Jesus. He considered God the Father to be Krishna, which alone is completely absurd, and that God the Father is separated from Jesus. He also believed that Jesus' body was insensitive at the crucifixion and that Jesus had gone to India after his resurrection. All these things are either untruths or myths. Prabhupada also thought that the cross was a bad symbol. In India they teach a lot of nonsense about Jesus and the Christians. Some Indians even believe Santa Claus to be the God of Christians. One cannot really be angry with them because most Christians are only name-believers who may even believe that some rabbit was born at Easter. Nevertheless: Whoever is to be deemed equal to Jesus, should know about Jesus and not believe in untruths and nonsense.

And then how can anyone who accepts a name that boasts beyond all measure like "Om Visnupada 108 Sri Srimad A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada" be like Jesus? Let me try to translate it: "Ultimate reality heaven of God 108 holy glorious fearlessly under the protection of the Lord's lotus feet ultimate conclusion of devotion religious teacher who has taken shelter at the lotus feet of the Lord." Jesus did not even want to be called "Master". He didn't want his disciples to throw themselves to the ground in front of him. Jesus did not concern himself with improving His prestige by founding particularly magnificent temples. Jesus certainly did not want to know anything about a caste system, not even about one based on characteristics rather than on birthright. Since Jesus was God as man, He could spiritually teach his disciples by speaking in their hearts. Therefore Jesus did not need books and many lectures and more than three years. Prabhupada, on the other hand, could only teach his disciples like a professor his students - and even more than ten years were not enough.

Prabhupada was not omniscient and made a number of mistakes. Which means - he did not fulfill his preached qualities of a pure devotee describing Jesus. For example, he did not believe that humans could walk on the moon. Even when he was watching it live on TV. The demigods would have tricked the astronauts he claimed. Maybe they landed on Rahu or Ketu. According to Vedic literature, Rahu and Ketu are either dragons, wolves or demons that eat the moon when it falls into the Earth's shadow. Prabhupada also believed in this ancient world view unshakably. He drove many a disciple, who could now vividly imagine how Galileo must have felt, almost to despair.

And then there's the thing with the milk and the cows. Prahupada's utopian ideas about rural life clearly show that he was an ignorant city dweller. A cow has a natural life expectancy of 22 years and can live for more than 30 years with good care. She only gives milk for some time after she gets a calf. A farm community that lives according to Praphupada's utopia, fairytale-like as it may be, very quickly has a barn full of cows and oxen that cost a lot of money but give far too little milk to feed the farm community. So milk has to be bought in - from conventional farmers, who give the bulls to the butcher after less than 2 years, and the cows after 4-5 years. If Prabhupada had been honest and realistic about cow protection, he would have had to build cow sanctuaries and limit milk consumption. But that wasn't really his priority. On the one hand, threaten anyone who somehow participates in the killing of cows with harsh reactions. On the other hand, buy milk from farmers who kill the cows. That's dishonest.

To some extent Prabhupada was also a pied piper - an Indian who took revenge for the injustice done to India by the European colonialists. Since the Indians, as one of the largest peoples on this earth, were first ruled by a minority of Muslims and then by a handful of Englishmen, the inferiority complex is well-developed. In addition, the English also fought and eliminated grievances that the Indians themselves were unable to overcome over centuries and millennia. That's unforgivable, of course. Prabhupada's ideas of the West unmask him as a nationalist. He was not only a missionary, but also behaved like an Indian imperialist and nationalist: All of America, the whole world, must become Krishna-conscious, by which he rather meant "Indian". Live like Indians, eat like Indians, speak like Indians, sing like Indians, dance like Indians, believe like Indians, die like Indians. He actually believed that only meat eaters, drunkards and womanisers lived in the West, that the West was dominated by materialism and nobody knew anything about God. His statements on this subject are disgustingly propagandistic and defamatory. The myth of the poor innocent Indians and the evil West. In reality, Indians are no better than Westerners and even have less spiritual knowledge than the West, where it is only hidden and misunderstood. There may have been fewer meat eaters in India, but there were things in India that were even more disgusting. Since Prabhupada believed in his propaganda, his two ideas in this regard also had to fail: 1) The lame but spiritually knowing India should guide the blind but progressive West, which would benefit both. But India could not help the West, because in reality it was itself blind. 2) If the Indians see the Westerners converting to Krishna consciousness, they would follow them because they see the West as an example. But the Indians did not convert when Prabhupada succeeded in turning Westerners into Vaishnavas. In reality, the Indians did not imitate the West, but simply wanted to satisfy the senses because they are no better than Westerners, as nationalism claims. When Prabhupada came to India in 1970 with his western disciples and organized kirtans, a large crowd of Indians chanted enthusiastically with them. But they didn't think about changing their lives and becoming ISKCON devotes.

Prabhupada's education was good, though somewhat one-sidedly limited to India. Nevertheless his victories in philosophical discussions are sometimes based on imputation, circular conclusions and a stubborn insistence on dogmas. If something didn't go the way he imagined, he just ignored it, or blamed his disciples. They forgave him for being an old man. To think that you know and be able to do everything, that you are free of mistakes and to blame everyone else, to be selfishness in person and conceal this by "doing everything for God and good (or whatever)" is a personality disorder called pathological narcissism. But Prabhupada probably just tried to deliver the ideal guru, to be Jesus Christ or God as a human being, who in reality, and not just presumptuously, knew and could do everything and was flawless.

Prabhupada statue in Vienna 1995

Idolaters become idols themselves

The Vaishnavas (and the commonality of the Hindus) are idolaters, although usually not in a crude form - and of course not only, but also, which is very important to emphasize. Idolatry belongs to the faulty and dark side of their believe - it's not the most important and not the only side. Just like the "miraculous" images of the Virgin Mary in the pagan parts of Christianity: even though it's all completely blatant, yet a great hullabaloo is still being made about it. Since one becomes what one loves and worships, the Vaishnavas themselves become idols, insofar as they themselves were idolaters. This can be observed especially with Prabhupada: In many temples of ISKCON one finds an almost frighteningly lifelike modelled image of him, which is worshipped of course.

In Christianity some people, mostly for church-political reasons, are made saints - idols. The same is done by the Vaishnavas, although without a commission of inquiry, miracles of duty and official pronouncement. Human and natural things are faded out and by an exaggerated attribution of religious traits an idol, a saint, is produced - often also by the addition of constructed and invented great deeds.

A devotee of God may be a beggar on the outside, but inside he is a confidant of God, an angel, a hero. This is not wrong. The cult, the idolatry, is wrong - if you fade out the "bad things" and make someone or something into something monstrous.

The afterlife of Prabhupada

 

After hearing about the scandals of Prabhupada's successors, I naturally interpreted my special dream of Prabhupada in such a way that he was threatened in the afterlife by them and their sympathizers. I sent this dream to PADA, which was a reform movement of ISKCON, and many agreed with this assessment. After everything that had happened at ISKCON, these successors were believed to be capable of anything.

Many years later - I had left ISKCON and Prabhupada behind and turned to Jesus - I read a book by Carl Wickland: Thirty Years Among the Dead. There it is described how sect founder retreat completely into themselves in the hereafter and thus become unassailable for all the enemies they had made themselves by deceiving people and possibly plunging them into misfortune. Insofar as those demon-faced disciples of Prabhupada, whom I saw in my dream, were not already angry with him in this world, they became angry in the hereafter. Because they were suffering and didn't know were to go and when they found Prabhupada, he could not help them. After all, his promise was to lead them to God like Jesus. But he is not Jesus. They had sacrificed their lives for Krishna and Prabhupada. And now this! Of course they got angry!

But that's not the end of the story. Years later I had another dream of Prabhupada. He was now "Swamiji" again and together with other good spirits helped one of his former followers, who was still on earth, to get his lost life back on track. It may be that Prabhupada's success once went to his head and he became proud and wronged others. Still, he's one of the good guys! Once, in the early days of ISKCON, his disciple Hayagriva dreamed that Prabhupada was a demigod or angel. I don't know if he is, but he's one of the good guys. He's fixing things.

Why I don't just leave Prabhupada behind

Although I follow Jesus, and no longer Prabhupada, he belongs to my path and to who I am. To me he is like the moon, which sometimes remains visible in the sky, although the sun has long since risen. For example, I continue to follow the four regulative principles (no eating of meat and eggs, no intoxication, no illicit sexuality and no gambling) he has defined as a prerequisite for his disciples. But I only do this because these regulations are helpful in spiritual life and because I am naturally inclined to comply with them.

For his first disciples the swami was a sage, grandfather, spiritual master and dearest uncle in one person. He didn't think he was too fine to deal with the mad and outlaws, the sinners. He was not a high society swami, or a guru you keep like a pet. He had a strong faith, a lot of charisma and he was authentic, and that was certainly an essential reason for his success. And he was a man of action. What he wanted, he not only preached, but did it himself. He cooked, he ran his household, cleaned up, led kirtanas and bhajanas. He also stood on the street himself to distribute his magazines. This hands-on activity is proof of a living faith and true love of God. Prahupada was practically inclined. Although he was a mystic, his head did not float in the clouds of mysticism, as can be observed in other swamis. He was in his heart beyond the world, but not in his normal conversation consciousness. Prabhupada was downright ingenious at reducing complicated philosophical topics to the essentials and putting them into practice. And even if he got angry sometimes, his friendly humor remained. In all these things I take him as an example. One of the many good teachings of Prabhupada and the Vaishnavas is that in spiritual life you should be like a bee: You get the nectar and ignore the thorns.

Thank you for reading.

Hell and reincarnation

In Christianity there is now and then talk of eternal hell punishment, which has always been called into question by wiser people. An eternal punishment would make God a demon that is infinitely worse than even the worst criminal and sinner could ever be. There is eternal damnation only concerning the spirit, for example the spirit of Judas, who is condemned as a traitor for the foreseeable future, probably forever. The betrayal of Jesus (= the spirit of Judas) is a member of hell and not of heaven. The same applies to the spirit of Satan, who seeks to destroy God. Of course, the pursuit of God's destruction does not have its place in heaven either.

Concerning the soul, however, there can be no eternal punishment. The soul is the formal being of the spirit and can break free from its hellish spirit. It behaves like the light (the spirit) and the object (the soul) on which the light falls. If the soul detaches from the spirit, then the spirit is like a light that does not fall on any object, i. e. is practically non-existent. Sooner or later a soul in one way or another inevitably detaches itself from its evil spirit, because no soul can endure eternal pains of hell.

Since, therefore, for several reasons, no soul can eternally fall into the hands of Satan or become one with him, which would mean that Satan could actually defeat God, the question remains, of course, what happens to a soul that ended up in hell after it was abducted or seduced there by the evil spirit. There are several possibilities, one of which is reincarnation.

Reincarnation

To understand reincarnation

In order to understand reincarnation, one must know that the soul can either take a spiritual direction, i. e. it can unite with God, thereby achieving eternity, or it can take an unspiritual direction, whereby it assumes the qualities of matter, above all transience. Matter is in a constant cycle of origin and decay, of birth and death, and it is precisely this cycle that the soul is then subject to. Far Eastern religions call the cycle of birth and death samsara. When the soul is subject to this cycle and wanders from one material body to the next, this is called reincarnation.

This also makes it clear who is reincarnated, namely those people who are attached to the world who do not care about God and spiritual life. He who disregards the will of God in his heart and instead attaches himself as far as possible to worldly and self-love, who does not want to subordinate himself from his own free will to the will of God revealed to all men, does not get lost because of this, but succumb to reincarnation. Reincarnation is in principle nothing other than hell, because hell in the spiritual sense means selfishness and worldly love, in the natural sense body and matter. The difference between the notions of the afterlife of the Occident and the Orient is in reality merely an artificially constructed one based on a lack of insight into spiritual things.

There are two kinds of reincarnation. As long as a person is not yet in the deepest hell because of the wrongness of his love, after many bitter experiences he can become again what he was originally. His soul remains intact and can be incarnated again as a human being. But whoever has fallen for the actual eternal death, whoever is in the lowest hell, is no longer able to come out of it in the same primordial being, because he has lost the primordial life of the spirit. Such a man has no more conscience and is completely indifferent to everything. He blasphemes and scolds God and builds a throne for himself from his arrogance. Such a soul must be dissolved and transformed. Its components then migrate on long paths through the flora and fauna back to the human.

In general, there is no remembrance of past lives because such a recollection would severely affect a person's life. On earth it is about becoming a new creature in and from God, and not continuing an old order of life. Only when the soul has reached inner union with its spirit of love from God does it remember again, but in a transfigured light. There is then no longer deception and illusion, but only a brightest, heavenly truth and everything in the soul and apart from it becomes the highest bliss. All other remembrances must be viewed with skepticism. Since a human being is networked with a multitude of good and evil spirits, it can happen that the memories of a spirit are transferred into the human mind. This can then give rise to the misunderstanding of having seen scenes from a previous life, even though in reality they are scenes from the life of the spirit of a deceased person.

Why do so many Christians not know about reincarnation?

 

The Christian doctrine is addressed to all people and it is not given to everyone to grasp the secrets of the Kingdom of God, for this requires time and spiritual maturity. A person does not need to know anything about reincarnation in order to attain salvation. Reincarnation only becomes comprehensible when one recognizes and understands the nature of the soul, and this is not an easy matter. There are many extraordinary things which are not yet to be presented to immature people because they are of no use to them and only confuse them.

On the other hand, reincarnation can also be known about without understanding it. I have been given knowledge about the existence of reincarnation as an inspiration already as a child. One fine day, as I looked up at the sun, lying on a blanket in the grass, this truth came to my mind beyond all doubt. Just like that. At that time I had almost no idea of religion and spirituality. But I knew there was reincarnation. It was not until much later, through the new revelation of Jakob Lorber, that I understood it too. In the Far Eastern religions, reincarnation is pretty much the only thing where everyone agrees that it exists. There are differences in the details and there are also some mistakes, such as the idea that a bad human soul as such has to live in an animal, as punishment. However, a human soul can never be incarnated in an animal body, just because the soul builds up and maintains the body. Just imagine: How would you like to get along with a dog's body? It's only for Hollywood, but nothing real.

This dog was not a bad man before.

When a soul is dissolved into its constituent parts, it may well once again migrate through the mineral, plant and animal kingdom to man, but these constituent parts have as little to do with the former human soul as the clay from a failed pot, which has been given back to the general clay and formed into a completely new pot, has to do with the failed pot. Reincarnation is also not a kind of normal rule for humans, but rather an accident. Man is destined to end the soul's migration, i. e. to stop being incarnated. His destiny is not that of a prisoner in the eternal cycle of birth and death.

Thank you for reading.

Some words about Hinduism und Vaishnavism

Hinduism is a true treasure trove for the adventurous seekers of truth and spiritually minded people. It is the most colorful world religion, because mysticism is not banished into a rumble chamber, stoned, crucified, or burnt at the stake. Non-violence is written in capital letters. When wars are fought, it is mostly on a philosophical basis and not bloody on the battlefield. Also things like inquisition, jihad, crusades and torture chambers are searched in vain. For animals Hinduism has more heart than other religions, except Buddhism. There are also no sects that have become too large or too powerful and consider themselves to be the measure of all things. No religion is more colorful than Hinduism. Nowhere else there is so much singing, dancing and fun. Hinduism is as diverse and crazy as humans. But Hinduism also has less friendly pages, to which I would like to dedicate myself a little bit more here. It is more important to know the downsides of a thing than all the good and marvelous things.

As far as the Vaishnavas are concerned, they belong to a mainstream of Hinduism. Vishnu or Krishna, one of the main gods of Hinduism, is recognized by them as the only God. The other gods of the Hindu pantheon are only demigods, angels so to speak. This one Krishna or Vishnu can be achieved through love (prema) and devotion (bhakti). Although the Vaishnavas are very different from the Christians in their appearance, they are nevertheless that flow of Hinduism which comes closest to Christianity. The Vaishnavas tend to accept all sorts of things when they think they can do better missionary work or serve God. Through and through mystics, they overcome all sorts of limitations, regularly annoying conservative Hindus and even other Vaishnavas.

Russian Vaishnavas holding a wagon festival

The Vedas: Gods, Heroes, Demons and Monkeys

Yeah, I love the monkeys. Monkey god Hanuman fights with an army of monkeys in the service of Prince Rama against the demon Ravana. How can you not love that? Vedic Hinduism is based on sagas and legends, enriched by theosophical and philosophical teachings. In order for these teachings to be better accepted and kept by the folk, the ancient Indian wise men and poets put them into the mouths of mythological gods and heroes. One can consider the Veda as an Indian variant of Iliad and Odyssey. The Hindus like to claim that the Vedic writings are historical. However, because virtually no historical or archaeological evidence can be found, they also claim that these are stories from millions of years ago, or if the stories are too fantastic, to be stories from other planets. Certainly there may be a historical core, but due to all the imaginative decorations and poetry, it is almost impossible to find out. Nevertheless, the stories still convey truths despite their mythological nature. And as far as the many deities are concerned, this is, of course, to be rejected as something real. Rama, Krishna, Shiva, Brahma etc. lived in the real sense as little as Zeus and Apollo once did - but they still contain something characteristic of the eternal and true God.

 

Guru-ism: Hello, I am Super-ego-man!

Anyone who believes that popes and patriarchs are the summit of priestly pride obviously does not yet know the Hindu gurus. Especially the more well-known representatives of this species do not know anything like a summit. There is simply no limit to what a Hindu guru would not presume. A guru is to his disciples, in short, more than just EVERYTHING, more important than God. Maharaja ("Great King") is just the least. Some claim to be more than all other masters, others claim to be masters of the universe (sic!), yet others claim to be as good or even better than Jesus, some are even considered incarnations of God. Sometimes, when you go for a walk in India, you are glad to not meet any incarnation of God.

Since Hinduism does not know Jesus Christ, but only a distorted image of the true Jesus, the place of the only true Master remains free and is occupied by the gurus, similar to the way the moon takes the place of the sun at night. Some few gurus are like the beautiful full moon, most are like the waning or increasing moon, the annoying ones are like the new moon. In principle they are imitators or placeholder of the one true Master, Jesus Christ, who is like the sun. The gurus resemble the moon, which in itself is a dark and cold body, but can reflect the sun's rays. Thus they are the masters of the night and have their use for the wanderer in the night. Before you can see the light, you have to deal with the darkness. But as soon as the day begins to set in, as soon as the one true Master, who is like the sun, rises above you, the gurus are superfluous and sometimes even in the way, like the moon, which sometimes eclipses the sun. In the daytime, the moon has expired, you may still see it in the sky, but the light comes from the sun.

Fortunately, despite all their hubris, the Hindu gurus hardly ever take themselves as seriously as the "representatives of God" - the moons - of other world religions. The reason for this is not only the relaxed attitude of Hinduism, but above all the fact that the Hindu gurus dismantle themselves before they or their followers become too powerful. Since a Hindu guru practically thinks he is God himself, it looks bad with the succession, because first of all God can never resign or even die, and if he does this completely unexpectedly, of course he has certainly not found a worthy disciple, because a second God besides the only true God, how is that supposed to work? Thus the gurus automatically disassemble themselves, if they haven't been caught up in any scandals before, or have run off with the donation box and a pretty follower to test the stability of beds and lead a less crazy life. Hindu gurus and pop stars are actually very similar.

 

Initiation: My name is "Juggernaut's slave"!

Initiation means for the Vaishnavas to leave the old life behind and start a new life or to open a new chapter in life, whereby there are many variants of initiation. The most popular ones are the initiation as Vaishnava (diksa), which is comparable to the practice of monastic vows, the initiation as Brahmin, the Hindu variant of priestly ordination, and the initiation as sannyasi (mendicant), for which I cannot think of any comparison from Christianity. The Vaishnavas are wasting an endless amount of energy in arguments about initiation, which in itself clearly shows what is to be kept of all these initiations. On the one hand, they see it as a mere ceremony, but on the other hand, their whole world revolves around who has which initiation and, above all, from whom. For the initiator always functions as a guru, not as in Christianity, where it makes more or less no difference who inaugurates someone.

The disciple benefits from the fame of the guru, just as in the world a student benefits from a famous professor, so it is a big problem for the disciple if the guru is not in good standing. The grotesque exaltation of a guru is therefore based on the efforts of his disciples to worship him like a god and to give him the greatest titles.

Hindu gurus use the initiation to take control of their disciples. The disciple should leave his old "sinful" (= non-guru-driven) life behind him and start a new "spiritual" life. That's why he gets a new "spiritual" name. Thus the disciple lives a chain dog life, an alien life dictated to him by his guru often down to the smallest detail. It's like the disciple is wearing a mask. This can be quite funny for a while, but at some point he will find out that he doesn't control the mask as he might have thought, but the mask controls him. An identity crisis is thus inevitable. Eventually, the person behind the mask can't stand it anymore and tears the mask from his face. So he has at least made a valuable experience of what spiritual life is NOT. Spiritual life does not mean putting on a show. It's not about titles and honors. You have to grow into a real spiritual life and this takes time and humility and you don't just blind out a part of your life.

 

Idolatry: Money, Money, Money!

 

Hanuman statue in Andhra Pradesh

What is idolatry? Virtually everything can be made an idol, be it a picture, a statue, a person (including yourself), a book, an animal, a plant, a stone, namely by making it a deity. Only through idolatry does something become an idol. Instead of just looking at a statue, reading a book, treating a person with respect, one begins to perform a "holy of holies" act about sacrificing all sorts of things (which one then appropriates oneself, because that's what idolatry is all about in the end). This was also attempted in the case of Jesus, even during His lifetime. And like any normal person, who sees such annoying behavior, He admonished: "Do not make Me an idol!" Fortunately, Judaism was completely opposed to the worship of portraits, relics and statues, because otherwise we would have had similar problems in Christianity as in Hinduism.

An idolater soon realizes that other fools admire him as especially holy and they even begin to sacrifice to his idol. That's how the big moneymaking develops. Finally temples are built, festivals are held, processions are made and above all a lot of noise and shouting. The donations flow, and idol temples are the richest institutions in the country. The ancient commanders and kings knew exactly: If you need money to pay for your army, attack the next temple of idols, and you've taken care of it.

It is sort of sad that even the Vaishnavas engage in this business and promote it. According to their philosophy, their pictorial forms of Vishnu etc., as they are designed according to the descriptions in their Holy Scriptures, are spiritual and not material forms, that is to say electrified and therefore as good as electricity. But they miss the real point, because idol worship remains idolatry, even if it is organized around a spiritual form. Spiritual images and statues can be useful to give beginners and children an idea of spiritual life, but once they are made idols, there is a danger.

One may dismiss idolatry as mere spectacle and money-making, which is why it would not be such a dramatic phenomenon. The problem with idolatry is that an idolater remains attached to the exterior even in the case of spiritual figures, risking spiritual death. This happens when he thinks he is doing enough, when he participates in the whole theater, gives donations, throws himself to the ground and so on. But this is not so, because the true spiritual life is not an outer life, but an inner life.

 

Caste system: Don't touch me! I'm poisonous!

 

The driving force behind the caste system are the Brahmins, who are spiritually at about the level of ancient Judaism, when Moses called the Levites to priests, a birthright. The Vaishnavas have been at odds with these birthright followers for centuries, but they still fail to get rid of the caste system, because the ancient Indian scriptures are infested with it. There are constant recitals and considerations about who was born into which caste, and thus the caste system remains a constant curse of Hinduism. It is one of the main reasons why Hinduism has difficulties to spread outside of India, because all not born in Hindu families are seen as barbarians and who wants to belong to a religion in which one is fundamentally disregarded because of his birth?

I strongly doubt whether Hinduism will ever overcome the abominable caste system. That would need a step like from Judaism to Christianity, and who, apart from the Lord Himself, could do such a thing? Even Gandhi couldn't do it. The father of the nation was against the caste system and yet it still exists. Those who suffer most in the caste system have been solving their problem for centuries by converting to another religion. Therefore, many Indian Christians are former "untouchables". Even the unpleasant nationalist Hindus are aware of this fact, but they too are not able to overcome this curse of Hinduism, but attack non-Hindus.

 

Neighborly love: Why?

Begging girl in India

In my opinion, the greatest and most threatening evil in Hinduism is lack of neighborly love. Neighborly love means leaving each one his own, and if he does not have it or cannot obtain it, to give it to him. If no one gets infectious diseases out of misery and poverty, no one becomes criminal or incites revolutions, then society as a whole will benefit. Not even an enemy should be denied a living because an enemy who has nothing left to lose will defeat his opponents.

The lack of emphasis in Hinduism is less due to a disgusting misinterpretation of the teachings of reincarnation and karma, according to which the poor in an earlier incarnation were bad people and should now pay for it. Rather, it is true that the poor are in most cases made poor and kept intellectually and materially poor by heartless rich man and rulers.

The reason for the lack of neighborly love is rather to be found in the fact that Hinduism has arisen in India. India is a country where you can survive without a house and even without clothes, because the climate is subtropic. Nature is also very lush, which is why you can get the necessary food with comparably little effort. The Indians did not need to emphasize neighborly love because they could manage well on their own and were less dependent on the help of others. In cold and less fertile countries, charity is more strong, because otherwise people would not have survived a winter. This explains the particular hard heartedness of Indian wealthy people, of whom there are many, although India is considered a poor country. They live in their palaces and have no problem with it, if the greatest poverty prevails in front of their door. Even with children, they have no sympathy. At the same time, they are scolding the West as rotten and consider themselves to be the best people in the world. I therefore see with a certain horror when India gains increasing influence in the world. As long as Hinduism does not find more neighborly love, it will hardly ever succeed outside of India and other climatically similar countries, because the followers will simply not be able to survive.

One might ask: If non-violence is a high ideal of Hinduism, why not neighborly love, doesn't it somehow belong together? The reason for this is because non-violence is founded in the actually selfish fear that what one does to others is doing to oneself. "If I kill this mosquito, I'll be born a mosquito in my next life and I'll be slain." No one wants that, of course. A non-Hindu would rather kill the mosquito, so that others would not be disturbed or become ill if stung.

 

Hindu extremism: Hate and violence

The World Watch List of Open Doors lists India in the unglorious eleventh place ahead of Saudi Arabia (!). The increasing influence of intolerant Hindu extremism poses major problems for those of other faiths in India as the violence and attacks of local Hindu groups such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Shiv Sena or Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and angry mobs of villagers incited by Hindu clergy are not stopped by the authorities. These local, state and national authorities are often dominated by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This has nothing to do with the truly religious Hindus, who reject violence, but is nevertheless a great disgrace to a country that is admired for its non-violence and Gandhi.

In general, nationalism and religion are not really compatible. We are all children of the same one God and especially Hinduism rejects identification with material things and circumstances. Nationalists are like watchdogs, deterring thieves and murderers, which may well be necessary, but they also scare off innocent, good and desirable fellow human beings and possibly even attack them, because dogs are devoid of any real distinctiveness. So it is best not to keep them and even if they are necessary to educate and keep them in such a way that they do not harm others.

Extremism is one of the safest signs of being faced with false prophets, power-hungry priests or  hatemongers. Hindu extremism is essentially founded in the caste system and is promoted by its beneficiaries, the Brahmins, temple priests and businessmen from this environment. Unfortunately, these wolves in sheep's clothing have a strong following among the stupid in the people. So it is difficult to deal with this phenomenon.

What anyone can do is not unnecessarily provoke Hindus. Show consideration. No one has to eat meat and kill cows to survive in India. Same goes with drinking of alcohol. Even if there are many things that can be criticized in Hinduism, and some of them must be criticized, this should not be exaggerated. Everyone first of all sweeps in front of his own door, there he has dirt enough for it.

As soon as the Hindus realize, in this world or the next, in this life or the next, that their gods do not exist and their gurus cannot save them, they easily find the only one true Master, Jesus Christ, and the only true God who incarnated in Jesus Christ on earth. This insight can be forced as little as the sunrise. When the time is right, the Lord reveals himself. Until then, Hinduism is a good preschool and way better than a sectarian Christianity. Hindus find truth much easier than sectarian Christians - like the old pagans found to Jesus rather than the Jews. The first will be the last.

Thank you for reading.